Is Therapy Bad for You? with Abigail Shrier

I 100% agree. During my parent's divorce the court ordered me to have weekly therapy for about 6 years. My parent's divorce was NASTY and I went through serious abuse in my bio-mother's home. The therapy was useless and made things worse. I could not talk about the actual abuse happening and had to sugar coat it so I would not have the parent reported to CPS create more divorce drama and instability, I just told them enough to be taken out of her custody. While in that court mandated therapy, the therapists found I was depressed and tried to get me on lots of drugs. I refused and became super careful to cover up my feelings while in sessions since I was wise enough to realize being depressed was the natural consequence of my messed up childhood, lots of bullying, and the constant pressure from therapists. The best "therapy" I got as a kid was looking at my uncle's and aunt's healthy stable marriage and family - just seeing it from afar gave me a target to aim at. As a grad student, I did get therapy that I sot out. I was diagnosed with PTSD from the abuse (it was serious, not just being yelled at once in a while), it was affecting my ability to work and connect with other people. There was a limited course of treatments directed at fixing a problem. No drugs. It worked. Therapy has a use, but the extended therapy given in childhood was an expensive, useless, waste of time and it could have made things worse had I not shut down once they tried to get be on drugs and I realized I did not want CPS involved. I was friends with a number of kids that had been taken by CPS and their stories made me think that no matter how bad things were in one parent's home that I needed to hold onto my other parent's home and if there was an over reaction from CPS I could easily fall from the frying pan into the fire. I look back and am so thankful to my younger self for seeing things the way I did.

We have no coming of age rituals. We've pathologized growing up, play, masculinity, and disagreement.

You almost put your therapist to sleep - who is paid to listen - then you decide to start a podcast. #Legend

Coleman is one of the very few public figures in the US who gives me hope for the future of our country.

"What we now call Exposure Therapy, we used to call Parenting." Abigail and Coleman, this was a brilliant conversation. Thank you.

I was forced to go to therapy for an eating disorder when I was 19 AFTER I WAS ALREADY RECOVERED. I was told by multiple people "It can only help." They were so wrong. Going to therapy just made me feel worse. One therapist I visited tried to convince me that I really wasn't okay and that I was just avoiding the problem. I was trying to move forward, and they tried to stick me back in the past . I love when Abigail talked about ruminating, because that's exactly how I felt. They made me go back and re-live my pain when I was doing so much better, and all it did was hurt me. They seemed to think that it wasn't possible I had recovered on my own without "professional" help, as if I'm not resilient enough to overcome things on my own.

I married an immigrant and she was the first one to point out how fragile people are in US. It was like a curtain lifted from my eyes

As someone with ADD and having a son with it as well, I was very against medication until I finally gave in when my son started 8th grade. My son went from failing in school to graduating with an advanced high school diploma, he went to college and now in his 30 has a great career. He wouldn’t have had that the way he was heading. I started after being evaluated. It seriously changed my life where I can accomplish something, I don’t feel anything from it but I am able to concentrate and get things done. I don’t believe it should be prescribed as much as it is now. Or be given to young kids. But it really helps those that need it.

Great to have you back Coleman! I am sure a lot of us were waiting and wondering when you would be back to restart these very valuable conversations.

I had a traumatic experience with a therapist in 9th Grade. Therapy was ending and he told me that from his experience I was the type of person that would end up spending a long time in prison. I'm 54 now, I've never had any run-in with law enforcement. I've never even gotten a traffic ticket and I drove professionally for more than a decade. That is on messed up thing to say to a child suffering from trauma, "I can see you are going to be loser with no hope." I can only assume he told me that out of some misguided hope that it might help me avoid that outcome.

Coleman, I've been a psychotherapist for 36 years, and agree with most points made here, & strive for brief treatment - if I'm successful, my patient/client will "lay me off", realizing the no longer need appointments with me. The reason SSRI patients are statistically more prone to suicidal behavior is mostly simple statistics: almost all SSRI patients are depressed, and so are almost all suicidal individuals, and understandably, their physicians usually try SSRIs, as the go-to Rx. Would you blame beta blockers because most CARDIAC patients who die were on them? That said, I'm cynical about the prevalence of psych med prescribing. Happy to talk further with you about this, psychotherapy or mental health. Great work, topics, guests, tact.

Part of the problem with misdiagnosis thats not even talked about here is the fact that insurance wont cover treatment unless someone has a diagnosis. There is a lot of pressure on therapists to come up with a diagnosis for this reason. That said, the onus is on the therapist for making sure that "ptsd" or "adhd" is not just an adjustment disorder or prolonged grief

Coleman’s back - The world got a little bit wiser.

Came here after your visit to The View. Its rare to see someone so aggresively wrong. She wanted to bully you away from your opinion and scare her viewers away from you. To poison the well. You handled it perfectly, with a great combination of preparedness and class. Checking out more of your work now

54:12 I'm glad she mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy positively. It's supposed to be structured so that you are given mental exercises to do at home such as exposure to build mental resilience and stop ruminating. Like physical therapy, you make specific plans for a few weeks of intense work, then you’re done, with the problem fixed and/or enough resources to continue to improve on your own. It also doesn’t deal with “causes” since many anxieties/phobias/etc. don’t necessarily even have some dramatic cause but is just a result of rumination. It’s starkly different to talk therapy which is often designed to have no ending and assumes some trauma behind every negative emotion. Alas, as she said, now many therapists are claiming to do CBT because it’s becoming a buzzword, but it’s just talk therapy.

I've long held her view, and I'm glad to see her share it.

Our third-grade classroom had internet on 9/11, but it wasn't on all day. So I didn't know about the Twin Towers attack until I heard it on the car radio. The next day, kids wanted to talk about it. I said we would discuss it for a half hour and then return to our normal schedule. We did. I answered questions. None of the students brought the subject up later in the day. If I had made a big deal of discussing feelings and fears, they would have been horribly stressed out. Or so I believe.

The cheapenning of various diagnosis like "ptsd" and "adhd" and "trauma" is very harmful. There seems to be a desire to post a diagnosis, and for people to search for the surrender to be "diagnosed". Moreover, the declared focus on negative emotions and experiences is by itself a high risk of being destructive.

Dear Mr. Hughes, I watched your performance on the View and wanted to say I was stunned by your emotional control and impressive debating skills. I think you have the leadership qualities our country needs. If you need a worker to assist you in your cause, I may have interest in providing that work. I don't know what a person like me can offer. But you inspired me to offer help if any help is needed.

Abigail is amazing! Thank you, Coleman, for having her on your show!